


waking up in her halo.

by RookieBrown



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29914029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RookieBrown/pseuds/RookieBrown
Summary: The station’s warm which is the only solace because Toni's train is late. Toni is scrolling across her screen when a voice, a few feet away, pulls her gaze up, makes her turn in whatever direction she had heard it from. It lands on a girl, a grey beanie on her head. She speaks annoyed in a heavy Texan drawl but with a light laugh in her voice that Toni had always reminisced about and moments later, her feet pulls her towards that said girl.or,That friends-to-lovers-to-strangers-to-lovers AU with a dash of light angst and Christmas vibes!
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 16
Kudos: 114





	waking up in her halo.

**Author's Note:**

> The songs that inspired me enough to pull this story through -
> 
> a. Oblivion - Bastille  
> b. Champagne Problems - Taylor Swift

The station’s warm and that’s the only solace because your train is late. Just empty, albeit a few others like you, _lone souls_ and all of them _maybe_ , _most has to be definitely_ sitting in a near barren station on the 26th of December. You take a long look around – a lone guy gloved in utter fancy wear with an odd dismay on his face; an old couple weary in bones but enchanted in spirits as they sit clasped two peas in a pod without an ounce hastiness for _nothing_ ; a pea-coated woman with lavish heels unsuitable for the weather and a few drunks here and there; nothing concrete _really_. Just scattered people from different walks of life. You sit up and dare another glance at the aged man and woman. They aren’t talking, _just sitting, just living in their space_ – admiring that sublime ordinarily extraordinary of just being together, you think. You tug the muffler around your neck as you go for a sip of your coffee. It’s empty.

It’s your third cup.

You look at the coffee stand at the extreme tail ends and then look at your cup. You have half a mind to go back to _Fatin and Leah’s_. It’s not that you’ll be overstepping when they had extended their invite. But there’s something poignant about your own little flat, your discarded mug on the small basin, _blues playing_ on the radio and Mrs. Donovan’s pecan pie that she makes for you for Christmas. You don’t let yourself ponder enough as you pave your way towards the coffee stand.

You are scrolling across your screen, flashing past your mutuals when the sudden announcement of a certain morose man jostles the coffee in your hand.

_All trains delayed until further notice._

You groan. _A bit of snow and NY is down in the sick. Ain’t that fucking tragic._

The 40$ ticket burns a hole in your jacket and you half wonder if that ticket is worth your constant migraines anymore.

“Good lord, I won’t pitch a hissy fit but if you keep continuing on with your current tone I swea - ” The voice is a long few feet away from you but maybe it’s the winter silence weighing heavily that the dreary quietness enunciates everything around you. You pull your gaze up and turn in whatever direction you had heard it from and it lands _a girl_ – her back turned on you, a grey beanie on her head.

She speaks _and speaks,_ annoyed in a heavy Texan drawl but has this light laugh in her voice that you have always reminisced about, a _you’ll always have me_ as your feet tug you towards her. But it’s foolish, you nod your head. Years, _it’s been years,_ and you hear someone anyone having anything akin to _her_ voice and you rush to them, turning them in a small hope that even though your thousand phone calls were never made, _Shelby Goodkind_ would be somewhere out there safe. You almost turn your back because hope is never you, because hope is the single most dangerous thing _because she never let you cross that distance with her –_

But it’s 26th of December, technically you are a day late and many a prayer short, still you are wishing for a little bit of fairy dust as you lightly touch the stranger of her shoulder and she alarmed _,_ turns and – _fuck_ , you are already moving away apologizing because her eyes are too blue, her hair’s white wheat yellow and long and it’s just _not her._

The disappointment is nothing new. Honestly, you think you should have gotten used to it but the pain though dull is still the same and you swallow it as best as you rush outside to the freeze of a snow-clad city, in a haze of blurred vision that clings in your irises but there’s a dash and you feel the balmy sting spill of warm liquid on your palms and on someone’s coat. You hear the swift cut of a sailor tongue of curses from some guy but you honestly don’t give a two fuck as anger sprints through you, tugging you in the crossfire.

You hear the faint call of a _Toni, Toni wait_ somewhere and for a second you think you are hearing things now as you still rush towards the entrance, the scant heat dabbing on your flesh. However, there’s a grip on your wrist that twirls you away – away from the bright blue _exit,_ from the waiting areas of lone souls, and to one of the narrow corners, empty and cold. There’s a pushing open of a door and a second later, you find yourself in front of a mirror.

There’s a nudge of a handkerchief at you, another soft _you doing okay, right?_ from the stranger and you clench your jaw at your weakness, at the lack of control and you nod as astute as you can, turning about and splashing the cold face numbing water on your wash. You don’t miss _her,_ you think as your face hardens with each splash. You can’t miss someone who you don’t even know anymore but – you don’t know, maybe you miss the ghost of her as Fatin says or maybe, _just maybe_ you miss what _she_ made you feel. That’s what Dottie says anyway but Dottie’s nostalgic even though a part of her might be right. _Shelby_ – she wasn’t just someone you had loved, _she_ had unwilling coerced her pathway into you and your small _dented_ family-like Marty has always been. And now _she_ wasn’t. You splash the water so many times that the cold slips past your white shirt and into the thermal layer underneath it.

 _God,_ you are feeling _fucking_ lonely. You feel the light sting of water settle somewhere in the corner of your eyes. _No_ _, you aren’t going to cry – not right in front of a perfect fucking stranger. You are not that pathetic._

You close your eyes, knuckles gripping the old basin white tight.

“Thank you.” You cough out. “I’ll be fine.”

There are some movement, an opening and closing of the door and you think maybe they are gone.

“Toni.”

Shelby Goodkind would always say your name with a soft hum, a _special Texan twang_ she would tease it and the familiarity of it darts through the shallow hollow in your ribs. You look at the mirror and you see the poor dirty reflection of yourself half wet in your oversized checkered jacket, and _her_ standing behind you, arms crossed in front of her short-shouldered blonde hair with pink split ends. She has the same silver chained cross that lands softly on the curves on her chest, a skinned color trench coat, a grey scarf laying atop in black gloves and fitted red shirt, black slacks, and green _green_ eyes that bores into you, right the same.

_Fuck._

You had always thought whenever you would meet her again, you would fucking scream at her face, fucking hate her and loathe her and throw all those small decorations she would bring over each time because they would catch her eyes somewhere; dishes and small cups she had bought over to your place because she thought you didn’t have enough any utensils at your small cheap flat that you had shared with another non-existent roommate. But _then_ she stopped visiting your flat because you had broken up by then. You wanted to salvage something of _her_ so you had asked for friendship but that was just another broken promise from the beginning and each and every day after that you had thought about breaking those things which were _tainted by_ her, mail them back so you could feel a little ounce of joy at her pain.

( _But you never did. Instead, you watch them go rusted at a box at the corner of your cupboard you never opened anymore.)_

You don’t say anything as you both walk back to the waiting area, your heart on your throat. You can’t even look at her as you sit the same seat you have been seating in for the last 50 mins. Shelby follows your steps, loitering a few away from you. You take another deep breath, invoking the ground to swamp you whole.

Shelby loiters, pauses, and then asks, “Can I sit – sit by you?”

There’s a buzz in your ears, bulldozer loud that it had your head bending in a spirited ache.

You are 8 small, fiery, and a packaged spitfire growing on the other cheaper, _poorer,_ and violent side of the rails. The image of your father’s face fades in a way every memory does but his scruffy bearded kiss as he drops you off at school, _you remember that,_ with his hushed promise to pick you up afterwards. He doesn’t obviously. He splits and runs away from town, something about _responsibilities_. Your mother doesn’t say much of anything after that, just a loud and piercing _he never wanted this – us_ when you scream her _why why why._ You grow a year too long on blood tears _asking_ her a lot of these _why’s_ – why Kendra makes rehab her own white castle, why there’s never any food in their house just empty bottles and asthmatic smoke, why the kids at the school call her an orphan when she still has her mother. 

She never answers your whines. And one such day comes when she forgets to pick you from school, _overdosed and nearly dead_ but you don’t know any better. Your cries are unanswered, your limbs small and lithe against their struggles, your throat sore from screams and desolation as they make you seat in the backseat of some red siren-ed car away from the only place you had known to be your home.

You were 10 when your new foster family had moved in the small back town of Texas. You get enrolled in their local school and there you meet the town’s favorite pastor’s daughter, _Shelby Goodkind_ – skipping toes and bright-eyed. Your current foster family number 3 did the bare minimum for you but they gave you meals three times a day and by then you had learned to make yourself as small, as invisible as one could. Somehow out of everyone there, Shelby stood out a sore thumb. She was different. She would share her food with you whenever she could _momma makes extra anyways_ and you, against squinting eyes and all odds, you become friends.

You were 12 you learn you had liked girls all along. You were 13 and you know for sure the _Goodkinds’_ preach that people _like you_ are sick, sinful and marked and condemned to an eternity of hell and loneliness if you don’t change your path. Shelby says she doesn’t hate you, _she could never,_ but she then cringes every time you look at her and that’s where the crack begins - _actions speak louder than words._

You are 15 when you kiss Regan under the stars, warm in your forgotten mother’s jacket and a blanket, tummy full from the casserole that Martha’s mother had cooked for you specially.

You are 16 when Andrew, the resident homophobic asshole had pushed you against the locker, whispering slurs all the while Shelby had watched you both, petrified and ashamed, her cross hanging like a chain. It’s still 16 and you are walking home one night, hand burrowed in the thin of your wilting jacket when you catch Andrew slap Shelby in front of her Camry, her cheek red and her lips bleeding and you remember nearly breaking Andrew’s face that night, his back on the ground and his palms raised up as you had gone for another swing with your purpling knuckles but there was that warm shivering hand on your waist. Green sad eyes and a scalped lip, she had said, “Go, go, Toni. Just go. He’s not worth it. _I ain’t either._ ” The last she had whispered, the faint brush of her thumb on your bruised knuckles, _you want to ask, god you had wanted to ask_ but you don’t and she lets you go.

You are 17 and angry and apologetically regretful no sooner you break Regan’s car window when she breaks up with you. Because she’s right, you are a birch bark that once sparked never stops burning. That time, it’s only distant hallway glances of Shelby and Martha’s warm hugs that keep you sane and still.

You are still going on 17 when _Shelby kissing Becca in last night’s party_ spreads faster than heroin in the gossiping masses, a forest fire you want to run into but you can’t. Instead, you watch _and watch_ as Shelby takes in into the rage of a Dave Goodkind and her eyes follow you when they move through the hallway, out and away. You realize almost too late then and there, that it had been _Shelby Goodkind_ and her single half chocolate cookie that she had shared with you _all along._

You are 18. Shelby has been gone all fall and this summer. Her eyes had been lulled and dull when you see her at school. There’s _no_ _Becca_ by her side, only the sweaty arms of Andrew and her own shoulders slagging under the weight of the pageant crowns and the yellow mask and the cross that’s pulling her down to her knees. You have half a mind to tear it off when she pulls you in the bathroom, begging in her lips _to stop fighting Andrew even when he’s cheating on her,_ glittering shine and yellow dress as she bends and imprints the sweetest lavender chapstick on your lips, stealing your existence, leaving you utterly enchanted in her footsteps.

You are 19 and you blossom in the shy golden glow growing underneath Shelby’s skin as the miles that separate her from her fretful family grows bigger even though she’s in the same state as them. She’s happy though, you’ll take what you can get. You have netted the final score against your rival and Shelby’s gripping the CMU jersey of yours. It’s a week before spring break is starting and she’s sitting in your hoodie and you are kissing her in your small dorm. Her eyes dark under the lashes of the dying sun, staring at the green that encases it as it goes. It was beautiful as you had sat there by the window, her chin on your shoulders and her hand in yours. You had thought this _something good_ would last, that _for once_ the distance and the demons between CMU and Trinity U would stay dormant.

You are 20 and some days Shelby’s not really there when you talk with her, her eyes distant and her posture tighter. You ask hopeful for some concreteness, _some little truth_ and she says _she’s okay_ but the smile she gives you across the screen is the same one you see her falsify in her pageants. It’s a week before Shelby’s birthday when you open Facebook and you notice the strings of condolences on _Hopewell Lake High School’s_ page for Becca Gilroy. And that’s when the first domino falls and your sandcastle shatters.

Shelby nudges your shoulders lightly. You turn to her, the white noise a haze in the background.

“Can I sit?” Her lower lip is clasped encased under her upper teeth, forehead creased so hard that it had formed a few curled layers as she chases your eyes. You look away, your lips dry and teeth in a permanent grind.

“It’s a free country.”

She nods, hesitant, places the bag on her floor and sits down, inches away from you but some still apart oceans wide.

Time is relative but somehow it takes a glacial speed when Shelby sits beside you and all you find yourself doing is counting the long heavy exhales she takes – like she pumping for something to say but when there are just too many words, too much passage of time and just not enough bravery under the eyes of lengthiest of opportunity means nothing.

The soft undertones of Christmas bells fill the contour of the station and it’s ironic how poetic it is. To be and _not to be._ To be here and _still not._

The spasm of her legs grows bolder, the crook long metal seat vibrates underneath you since Shelby can’t see to seat still. It’s been going for a while now and you don’t know how much more _you can take,_ her look at you in a plea in your periphery as you force your stare pointedly hard at the red elf hat on the head of one of your audiences.

“You don’t know how many times I had practiced this – this thing, this speech that I would say to you _if -_ when - our paths would cross again.” Shelby turns her entire face at you, the southern in her voice nothing but a memory, all gone and too American now. However, you don’t turn to look at her. _You can’t._ “And here you are, just an arm away from me and - ” Her voice drops an octave, a chapped melancholy and wet. “ _Lord,_ I can’t remember any of those things because you are here. A fucking Christmas miracle, even though you can’t look at me.” She inhales another shudder. “I’m sorry, I’m real sorry Toni, I know – “

Somehow her words hit you harder than you expected. Whatever the hell are you going to do with a six years old apology bow tied in regrets when she had chosen to leave you, just a text _I can’t do this anymore_ and radio silence filled with nothing and yet everything. Six years and you knocking on Dave Goodkind’s door to see her one last time except she didn’t live there anymore and _Dave Goodkind had closed the door on your face_. That day you had felt fear overtaken and swallowed your anger whole into ashes as you had called _her_ again and again only to hear the same glowering line until Martha took the phone away from you. There’s that familiar twirl of anger clawing and you feel indulged in feeding those flames.

“You are still fucking pretentious, aren’t you?” The laugh that bubbles in your mouth is inflamed, your eyes sharp against her glassy ones. “Six fucking years and you think all this while I waited for your apology?” You nod vigorously and loathsome, tugging the muffler around your neck, the sling bag across your shoulders as you get up but cold fingers barely grasp your wrist.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t ever fucking touch me again.” You hiss at her as her hand recoils. You are bitter, you are livid and you can’t stay where she’s in the vicinity. This time when you run towards the exit gate, your eyes open and wide and heartbroken. 

You don’t smoke as often now as you did back in college, you can attest to that so will Marty except in a rather begrudged tone. _But then again_ you’ll have to handle those pin-in haystack sorts of cases of kids under your supervision. You would take the look of desperation and plea and that _anger_ brimming and brimming in dark black circles lesioned under their eyes, colliding the bare few good memories with worthlessness and loneliness that’s etched in their ribs – you’ll look at them all week, head held high and resolute that you’ll try your best to see them off and away in the best homes.

You’ll do your job, then on your one-off day, you would smoke and _smoke_ and cry and knead for courage for them. Because _hope_ is a luxury, a tiara on the head so heavy that your life will succumb to searching for it – when you very well know that people _like you_ would and will always be too poor to afford.

There’s a harsh brush on your shoulder and the butt of your second cigarette almost slips. Before you can shout out to _them_ , _they_ have already disappeared somewhere unbothered amongst the growing mass of the New York crowd as your feet move familiarly past the group and deeper into the city. You can feel the snow in the air, a hallowed draining energy clogs every surface of your open skin, making you ache in a renewed way.

You can’t help your resounding scoff _because of fucking course she followed you_ when Shelby sits beside you, body perched upon the three-seater against the strength of her arms as she gazes over the smoothening echoes of _yesterday’s_ Christmas Carols. You take one last long breathe of the almost gone cigarette, feeling the hot soot air crumb up the edges of your thinned soul. You cough out immediately, whatever charred end remains as you throw it away. 

“Can we not do this tonight?” _Or ever?_ Your voice comes off chapped and used. _God fucking hell you are tired._ Shelby leans back and you feel her look at you, too often too long. You half-heartedly wonder what she’s thinking. Back then, you could read her as good as your journal pages – open and painfully bare, stripped naked. _But not enough somehow._ It’s bittersweet really.

“Okay.” The reply’s as low as one’s octave can get, hesitant. There’s this constant open and shut of her lips, but then a moment passes. Another one and she looks away. Her silence fidgets you. Maybe she’ll go up and away just the way she came, _you think._ Like a fucking Christmas miracle in the halo of a dream. It leaves a coal taste in your tongue.

You pull out the packet and light up a third one for the night. There’s a shift in her trance. “How was Christmas?”

_Which part of “we cannot do this tonight” did you not understand!_

You want to snap at her. Because you are petty, always been a petty person and god, all your kids would probably hate you as your mind freezes around her three-worded question. Because you can’t look Shelby in the eye to even answer a question.

_How was Christmas?_

_It_ was good. All attendees had worn ugly ass sweaters. Dot had tried to make those store-bought gingerbread houses – the stature of her gingerbread house a success _for her whilst your house had collapsed in the first impact of Fatin’s deliberately harsh breathe._ You had been a bit pissed! Also, you could eat probably just about anything really but that bread was far too sweet and dry for you, so it was a fancy failure all in all. Somewhere in the wee hours of Christmas, Marty and Marcus had stolen as many mistletoe kisses as was humanly possible, all the while you have been warmly buzzed on cheap straight-from-the-bottle wine with Leah. It was _good,_ just a tad bit empty if anything – that echoing feeling of holding someone close, socked feet curled and all, tummy full and just warm, adamantly present. But you are not going to tell all this to a stranger even if you had known them for a good part of your life.

“Good.” Is all you can tell. “It was good.” The fountain across you is enamored with red hearts, the conifers sharp and astute with too many candy canes and red Santa caps looming a tall shadow cascading a few lovers huddled beneath it.

“How was yours?” Your lips are chafed, cracked in the stilled frost that hangs, the question nearly blurted out like the back of your hand. You veteran your fingers together, tipping the ash of your cigar on the pavement, as you put it between your lips again.

Shelby mulls over her words, lips curling in a small wonder. It’s the first time tonight you believe, she has been this close to smiling albeit it’s in a twinge of something else you quite can’t place. “It was simple. Ordinary really but it was good.” It’s the choice of words that turns your head. The Goodkinds had always been lavish and extravagant and utterly and sadist-ly white in their festivities – especially when it came to Christmas. _Church, Bible, some more Church and preaching, dinner with the Church members and that obscenely picture perfect Christmas greetings’._ All in that while, Shelby had always been closeted in happiness and her pretense and _her choice of words and the implications they carried._

The questions are at the tip of your tongue. One small spill and the cup overturned can’t ever be returned. Instead, you bite your teeth hard on the muscle of your lips. Faded green eyes darken under the neon street lights, adjacent and inhumanely beautiful on her.

“Did they announce anything about the trains?” You ask. _You can’t be here with her like everything was daisies and sunflowers._

“No.”

A tired huff sighs out of you - _yo_ _u,_ who look away fiddling with the almost end of the current cigarette.

Shelby clears her throat, fingers toying with a button on her coat. “I mean, I don’t think so. Can’t be too soon, a couple of hours with the snow blockade up ahead anyway?” The incessant thumping of her leg is back. “I don’t know exactly – I was sort of rushing after you.”

There’s that shallow dryness in your throat again, the tinge of a talon-shaped bygone anger necking out. “Why did you then? Why did you rush after me?”

She takes a staggering long exhale. This time your almost stolen glance at her in caught as she holds your eye in an exiled silence. For the first time, she looks as old and as tired as you feel.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to do this now.”

A wet laugh comes off from you. For a tad second, you think you watch her watching the curl of your lips around the dying butt of the cigarette. But that’s wishful thinking. And utterly _unwanted._ But there’s there again - her eyes chasing you and you wonder for a horrifying second if she can see the glassy coated layer in your eyes.

_God, you hope not._

“You hate me.”

You don’t know how long you have been staring at her when Shelby says it. She states it, more like it. Like some universal truth that’s been preached since elementary – a fact, without the need for any kind of concrete reasoning to uphold it in all of its ferocious accuracies. It further deems her and you into silence.

Shelby preaches it like an amendment, a lop-sided mellow downturn of her lips as she jerks her head and sits straight finally _finally_ looking away. Except you can’t look away.

“It’s okay.” She curves her body towards you slightly after some self-grounded intermittence, that sick _un-Shelby_ smile on her face. You hate it, _you loathe it, you want to snatch it off_. There’s this awful lump on your throat that drowns all your words. “I would hate me too.”

The silence leaves a chill that synapses your brain shut. “However, um, do you think for tonight – we – we could just be, not like complete strangers – just uh, just two people who were high school friends, who crossed paths and – and ” You wonder if there’s a crack in her voice or if the noises in your head are finally getting the better of you. You can’t tell, not when she’s turned away towards the alley lights and all you see is the bottom pink hues of her hair escaping from the tight bow of the scarf, loosened and almost open.

The brokenness of her voice adrift and blank recoils a barbed wire sting in you, your hands itching. Only then, after long threaded seconds do you realize you want thread your hand over her wrist, tight, _tight, so darn tight_ that you can feel her warmth seep in your broken soul when she finishes “ – and that you don’t hate me.” Your benign touch on hers alarms you more than her. You can’t hold her without tearing another part of yourself to her but you can’t _not_ let her fade in bitter half-truths when _you don’t hate her either,_ _you can’t hate her even if you wanted to._ You would know, you have tried.

There’s a lack of wind tonight, no movement. As you seat, you don’t blink. Neither does she. But your eyes follow her movements as if they’ll whisper her secrets to you.

The white crystal of a dense night dews on both of your immobile limbs the longer you sit still. _Cold,_ you justify instantly under your breath when you slip your palm from your grip on her and into your jackets. You don’t need an excuse, certainly not when you feel anything but cold, you are a veteran of Minnesota winters but any unnecessary touch on her is something unwarranted. Shelby looks at you in a compelled stretch, nodding in gibberish as she adjusts the side purse of hers, urging you to get up with her as she leads for you for some leg movement around the block taking another well-seasoned left turn when you can almost see the Empire State Building looming overhead.

“You come to the city often?” Over the years you have come to know NY at hers finest and loneliest, standing tall in a way that some days you couldn’t even grasp the reality that you were _here_ at all. And she hadn’t been. You wonder if she even remembers. Just another torn string of promise that hung a dull chandelier over your head, “unless you live here?”

You don’t think she hears you. She walks like she’s walking in a reverie, hazed with her head up in the clouds in a not so empty pavement reaching the end of the block. There is a rush and a shoulder-to-shoulder shove and she almost skids on her unsuitably high heels. You are agile, faster, your hand gripping over the contour of her arm while another slants around her thin waist. 

Her weight is a familiar ghost. Her eyes clouded in _something_ lost and her lips are too close, the smooth perfume of peaches and rose indulging your sinuses. Her bod weighs on you solemnly and you honestly don’t think either of you are breathing. But the cemented earth underneath you is still wet from fallen dews and it’s a small _shitty_ moment when you feel the sole of your boots skidding. In an unexpected and utterly holy turn of events she somehow clutches onto your jacket, clings you afloat, her right arm digging sharply as she nears you closer and steadies you with her. The air thins and the lump static in your throat.

“Good?” There’s a scratch in Shelby’s voice when she asks.

You nod and remove yourself as further away as you can, almost greasing the edge of the road. You shove your hands into your jacket, teeth coming out to bite hard on lips.

“Where are - ”

You notice the pinkish neon sign before she can even point it out. It’s a small café, _pink_ and too much pink with that modernish touch of retro. _Dot_ loved this café, _you disliked it heavily_ and it’s some sort of karma that Shelby Goodkind loves it as well. You groan loud enough but your stomach groans louder that Shelby looks at you amused, the clouds in her eyes clearing in tenderness.

“Come on you.”

Her hand is raised in a reflex as if to reach out to you, but then it doesn’t reach completion instead falls short in the gap between you two, briefly and painstakingly brushing past your knuckles. You look away instantly, a hot flush on your cheeks too rushed to even notice Shelby fervently staring at you.

There’s a discarded empty plate of your waffles with chicken and a half-filled glass of hot chocolate, and you are taking quite a generous bite of your pancake _too big for your mouth_ , the blueberry syrup already sticky and nearing dripping that you have to struggle it in. But your concentration shifts and drifts and settles on the occupant opposite you who tilts her head, the dense blonde hair mushed and frazzled and out of their designated station making it look awful soft. Her face is half-lidded, half-hidden by a big porcelain china mug, fingers bare of their gloves and from the shallow of it, she looks at you. The mug’s gone and you simultaneously feel the brush of legs closing in on yours under the small partition of the table, an almost docile scratch of paper tissue against your chin. A loud screech of utensils from somewhere in the back cut through razor sharp and moment breaks in two uneven halves.

Shelby curls the tissue to the side and you push yourself back, swallowing your pride and food in your mouth as fast as you can.

“You still eat like a child.”

She rolls her eyes and you retort second nature, “And you don’t eat enough.” You gesture, furrowing your brows up, nudging to her single large coffee with remnants of whipped cream and a piece of pie on the side.

Jeanette Linh, the shift head passes by smiling too sweet, too pink at you and waving at Shelby. Again the absurd familiarity strikes you.

“Come here often?” There’s an amusement and a shock in Shelby’s voice as if she can’t imagine you in a place like this. _It’s true, it’s not your scene. It’s a pink fucking bubble and the owner some Gretchen whom-you-had-met-once to last a lifetime creeps the hell out of you._

“Not if I can fucking help it. But the food’s good. It’s Dot and Marty’s go-to place whenever they are here, anyway so.” There’s a moment of a passage of shock and discontinuity, you watch it flicker as she nods and takes a hefty gulp of her coffee. You wonder how she could have forgotten them so fast. You shift in your seat eyes narrowed, “Uh, you remember them, right? Dorothy and Martha, we literally all went - ”

She puts down the mug and looks out of the window and then to you, a tight smile with a bitter bite sticking out sourly, “Dorothy Campbell. Martha Blackburn. We all went to the same school together for a good ten years, Toni, so yes I remember.” She looks down, fiddles with the protruded nails of her fingers. “We were all good friends, so I remember everything all too well.”

You can’t help the mock of surprise on your face nor can you elude it from your voice, “Those are your words, Texas.”

For a small tiny bewitching moment you let yourself believe that Shelby would suggest some kind of an icebreaker, it’s nearing to two hours since she has been by your side anyways - but she doesn’t. She silhouettes herself under a sheet of vagueness and silence, _two things that had never been quite her._

“Do you live here now?” You finally ask. You don’t think you have ever seen a more elegant way as Shelby cuts the pie and eats. She stops and looks at you almost surprised.

“No, oh no. Just visiting a couple of friends for the Christmas weekend. I’m in Binghampton now.”

“Oh.”

“For the last five years or so.”

 _Oh._ The possible implications are loud but you don’t know what else to say or how to react or _how to ask_ especially when Shelby says it in a way as if she’s saying it too loud enough for herself to hear. Under the table, your fingers curl in a tight white fist.

“Um, I took a gap year in my undergrad so that sort of delayed the whole thing when I moved to Binghampton U. Into my grad course right now – doing some night classes. Best I can do right now, between some tutoring anyway.” She swallows, pauses, and looks up to you, her face benevolent and free. “Gonna be one of those cliché _underpaid high school teachers_ you always made fun of.”

You almost smile at her remembrance.

“Yeah, But I would never make fun of _you_ ” You croak out, voice memory thick, shocked but happy nonetheless. It takes a minute to arrange your runaway thoughts. “I’m happy for you.”

Her laugh is abrupt and inhumanely short but utterly endearing and your fist loosens just a little bit. She breathes and clears her runny nose, stills her hazel gaze on you.

“What about you?”

“I’m in Pennsylvania now. Fell in love with the Penn State U campus when I was doing my grad and then with the whole city in general – enough to work for the fucking government, believe it or not. I guess I never moved after that.”

“You, _you_ Toni Shalifoe, works for our government? Darn, girl.”

The laugh that ruptures in her chest diffuses in red to the tip of your ears, “Yeah. A social worker. About 14 months now – give or that.”

The realization is a slow awakening on her face but instantaneous all the same. Your shift from captaining your CMU basketball team to championship victories to _this_ some A 9 to 5 job behind a mundane desk and a mountain of paperwork but it’s better than to ever again feel like that young, naïve you sitting in a room _hopeless_ with nothing but a ghost nipping the skin off your shoulders.

Shelby knows just about enough but not all, _not the entirety of it anyway_. _The lonely nights. The self-doubts. The vanity and insanity of it all._ She leans back on her seat, a nudge of her shoe against yours, “I’m of proud of you. Even though a few years late to tell you that.” The neon light flickers on her side and you catch the mumbled wetness in her orbs. It clings in a way that makes you want to feel guilty, except she lost that right years ago.

_Proud._

_She’s proud._

But what are words without the backbone of actions to hold them up? _Nothing. Useless._

“Yeah, you are.” The silence that follows is uncomfortable at best because these few feet feels like a thousand miles, sitting on a mountain of unsaid words and clustered regrets only to be broken when Jeanette comes for the plates, eyes bright under heavy grey mascara and a smile that always fails to reach out to you.

“Can I get you guys anything else?” Jeanette asks, and her words resonate in the silent diner and its cheap walls. _Louder and louder._

“Just the bill please.” You ask, placing a couple of notes on the table before Shelby can say anything else.

You are a keen few feet out of the shop, when Shelby pulls at your jacket, low but sharp enough to pull your clenched fist from your pockets. The sling bag around your shoulders nearly falls off.

“What the hell, Shelby!”

Her fingers move and fan in the crisp air between the two of you as if trying to conjure the right words that will fall out of the starless sky if you only try hard enough. _It doesn’t._ Only the lonely moon stares back and her bare hands shiver in front of you.

“I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry.” She shrieks as soft as she can control her instincts but it’s hard, you can see it in her eyes – trying to not lose the remaining semblance of control. Like she’s jarring _something_ in and in, in closed sealed boxes and the key to which is lost to the hurricane in the sea.

“I know you are.” You shake your head. _You know. But somehow it’s not enough._ “But I have to go.”

This time - it has to be on your terms. To end what she has started before she reels you in _hook, line, sinker._

There’s an incessant and constant buzz in your phone. You bow your head down and turn away from her caged rage hands searching the pockets for your phone. But you feel the bare ghosting of her cold fingers prick against you.

“I had my reasons, Toni.”

You tight your jaw, sniffling up the moisture further up your nose and away, _fucking away_ from your eyes if you blink just hard enough.

“I know.” You say loud enough for her to hear, but not enough for her to watch to fucking cry over something that happened ages ago. She doesn’t deserve your tears.

“I need to go, Shelby. Please just – I can’t do this again.”

There are 2 missed calls from Marty and a ton of messages from your group chat – mostly Fatin and Dot babbling and Leah lethargically replying even though you are sure they are in the same room.

You look at the time, the edge of your nose moistening. Almost 2 more hours to go. _You go could back to their place._

_Why haven’t you?_

“Toni, listen to - Toni. Toni!”

You are pretty sure if you reply to her, you’ll fucking blurt out something _anything_ that you’ll regret later with the added bonus of crying. Which you aren’t doing. She calls you another time frustrated and then there’s a second and a slip and the phone disappears from your hands.

“What the f -”

Your finger is raised as you watch her pocket your phone but it falls short when your rage meets the slow pencil of tears that falls the apple of her cheeks and around the clenched muscle of her jaw.

“What the – what the fucking hell do you want from me” The loud spit of teeth withers when you catch a few onlookers looking at the two of you and without much ado, she grabs you by your wrist, tall and steady and pulls you along hurriedly past another street and a corner and city buzz away to a long deserted alley behind some grocery store. For some inhumane reason you let yourself get pulled, aware of the snug fit of her fingers through yours – a spider web intricate and silvery strong.

You jerk your hand away as soon as you stop, palm open flat out to her. You wonder if the look on your face is as deviant as you want it to be. She’s unperturbed though.

_Fucking fine._

“Fine! Say your fucking martyred piece, Texas, so we can be all on our merry way.”

Shelby hands you your phone, your fingers barely touching, and goes to stand in contrast to the dusty walls of the paint peeling of the building fence, leaning head down, hiding all the soft and hard edges of her face akin to a way that Atlas had always stood. Or _tried too._ The long strap of her side purse bag slips off her shoulders and onto the dust just beside.

There’s that dying redness at the tip of her nose, ruddy and awful which escalates and mars with the tears in her eyes. “I had reasons - ”, she says and pauses rubs both her palms over her eyes, “You wake up every morning and you look in the mirror and you hope to see yourself and I never really saw myself in that mirror. Because for a long _long_ time in vain, I hated myself, hated being put up on the pedestal I never knew I could measure up to. But I am what I am. Self-acceptance is a hard tiring job. But right now – standing here from you all these reasons, they all fail to measure up.” There’s a searing pain, years’ worth of anguish in her as she steps towards. “You understand what I’m trying to say, right Toni?”

The distance widens as you take a small step back and lean against the other end. You want to say _you knew_ , that you had known what it’s like to be on the other side of the mirror, a surprise agony, an anomaly at the end of your mother’s whiskey problems. But watching Shelby curl her arms across her chest, cocooning in herself – it has you coiled in _hurt._ Because you had been there _always, always_ except she never ever saw you.

“You don’t owe me your reasons.” Your voice is clipped with the tiniest of brave that you can muster. Her laugh is faux and sinisterly painful.

“I know I don’t owe you my reasons, especially not when I needed to focus on my own sanity. But I was just so ashamed – I – I have had never anything against the people who followed this lifestyle, I never hate them but I just couldn’t believe that I was one of them. That I was a lesbian. I hated it. And I felt so ashamed that I hated it.” Shelby kicks the dry earth, her hands roped steady around herself. “The pretense got tirin’.”

“Did you find yourself? When you went to search for yourself _out there?_ ” You ask, the sneer isn’t harsh nor visible but it’s without your disappointment.

Shelby startles, face appalled and confused, “Yes, somewhat _yes –_ not everything but - ”

“I’m glad that you did. I’m really glad that you found some peace but what you did was fucking selfish. I’m not a fool who thinks you owe me shit no matter how much you think me to be but anything, anything would have been better than some two worded text - ” 

“Toni, I - ”

“And here you are, all nose scrunched up and raised high, demanding me to listen to your struggles and asking me to forgive you as if this is what this whole situation is about.”

“Toni - ”

You raise both of your arms, gesturing _requesting_ her to stop, half turned to walk away from the alley, “Just – stop.” Except she hardly listens and grabs you when you had repeatedly told her not too.

“Just because my struggles are different from yours, doesn’t fucking mean they are any less vital or that they hurt any less.” Her hair an amber shade under the lights, eyes agonized. 

You pull your hands away from her.

“I never said it doesn’t. That it didn’t.” The back of your molars grit into one another, the memory coming in nostalgic fear, sitting in your old beat up truck and hands hitting the wheel of the truck till there were sore and bruised, “Martha and I went to visit your daddy dearest when it had been months and no one had heard from you. He said you were no daughter and that he sent you away, you weren’t coming back anytime soon. I couldn’t have given two fucks that you left me in the dust, sure it fucking hurt like hell, but people break up, people leave – I have _lived_ that all my life. You wouldn’t have been the first or the last.”

You sniffle your nose, cheeks crinkled and desperation leaking. “Do you how many times I have to rush to some hospital because my own fucking mother gets herself overdosed every single time that I think maybe the next time I reach her, she might be dead in some gutter? How many foster kids I have seen in Christian homes thrusted into those bullshit camps and only return in bones and flesh or _fucking yet_ , sometimes never even come back? Do you know how many times unnamed kids, fucking homeless, aimless John Does die in the streets each day? No, you don’t know. _You don’t know how horrible I felt – like maybe if I had reached you sooner, tried harder you would be here._ But you weren’t.”

She’s torn, and you feel the phantom ghost of your own insecurities grow heavier.

“We might not have been anything _concrete_ but we were _something,_ you were worth _something_ to me. But you Shelby Goodkind, you fucking broke my heart. You didn’t have the decency to telling me shit and then you disappeared for six fucking years and all I hoped that you weren’t fucking dead in a gutter somewhere.”

“So, no. I don’t give two cents about your apology.”

Your walk away from her, your brisk fast and uncharacteristically unsteady. By the time you look back, all the houses have bent in one, the streets categorically wide and despite how un-empty it was, amidst all the murmured voices and hand muffled smiles a well-deep panic settles in. Your eyes frantic, your breath low and hard and tight in your chest, you search for her and only her, your legs running, retracing the path you taken back to the peeled off back walls of the alley store but – Shelby Goodkind _isn’t there anymore._

Your walk back to the station doesn’t yield anything either. If anything you feel lonelier than you had before you had started this evening. The unwanted silence that accompanies you raises their dead heads of spiraled unruly unchartered thoughts – a broken tape recorder of _just because my struggles are different than yours doesn’t mean they are less important_ that has you wanting to hit some brick wall somewhere. The punch doesn’t help at all, the physical pain only lasting a few minutes before leaving you prey to your dark mind.

_Always fucking fighting. Fighting without thinking of consequences._

Pushing your opponent and nearly breaking her ankle just because she had run her mouth too _bitchy._ Breaking Marty’s iPad when the past came crawling in your mother’s far and in between phone calls. Calling Fatin a slut just when she wouldn’t fuck you even though your blood was tainted in whiskey problems. Regan, patient sweet Regan had called you a birch bark and you had broken your wrist trying to break her car window. And _Shelby_ – Shelby always an afterthought to every one of your actions and non – actions and -

You thought you had been getting better. _You had._ The counselor had said certified so. But if you give up on the tangential anger that Shelby deserves, what do you even have left _of her_? _Nothing._

Standing in the same station finally penning that _fin_ to Shelby’s chapter in your life shouldn’t be this much of a _Greek tragedy_ and all you feel is her tears pricking your skin in some unsolicited language that she been writing and writing but no one could read. You jerk your head up and low and you don’t see her, some random person on inquiry says no train had left either and wasn’t likely to leave any time either.

 _So,_ just another needle in a barn that you very well know is out of your league.

You bend on your knees, spine ridiculed from the distance you have walked but the mocked satire of your ill behavior doesn’t let you settle. You haven’t stopped turning, _looking,_ it isn’t a race against time, _no,_ but here, out of breath and out of energy you wonder if this has all been a race against _chances_ instead.

Churches have always been rocks and pillars to you, enlightened by its own mirage of colors whose meaning seemed to have always evaded you. It’s not illumination or any dawn of realization that urges you to step up inside it but you are feeling that sense of longing and tiredness, your spine wilted under a barrage of your own sword. Evermore, a slow soft tune that resonates just outside its walls when you had almost nearly walked past, it had carried with it the wind of _her_ hymns of Jesus that she would sing aloud under mundane boring everything.

You sit somewhere in the middle, each silent step carrying a shadow of your inner reflection, a plea, _a selfish request_ just this once _._ A middle aged woman burns a candle, her voice in such symphony that you don’t almost catch the depth of the singing when she’s joined by another elder who sits at the front. The third voice that deepens the hymn adds another layer of sorrow joins the woman as she lights her own candle. The voice has you up from your seat but you don’t approach her until the lonesome melody tidies itself up in a bowtie that would have left the absent audience in a crack of loud applause.

Shelby doesn’t turn, you watch her smile as she answers their inquisitive replies before she pardons herself and walks to sit at the end third row in the front, fingers clamped in front of her. You walk up upfront to sit at the other edge of her row.

Shelby doesn’t look up, not until you have coarsened out a hard, loud enough _Shelby_ that resonates among the four board walls. Her face, however, you don’t make out, is shadowed by the curvature of the domed-shaped pillar that leads to probably another floor.

You move midway to her, just enough not to etch on her boundary.

“I’m sorry.” You apologize, with as much humility as a sinner can assemble within themselves. You can’t see her reaction though. You scrunch your nose just in case she misinterprets your actions. “Not that I was following you. I wasn’t. I was just walking by and I heard the song and I - ” You pause, exhale and confess. “I thought of _you._ I haven’t stopped thinking of you since we parted. ”

You rub the skin of your neck, the guilt sitting on your chest. Soft, wistful you say, “I’m sorry for how reacted back there and what I said. When I turned and you weren’t there, I – I thought you were gone again and I just, uh, these thoughts - ” The guilt ablaze your guts gasoline high that it settles in shallowed tears over the crevices of your eyes.

“Toni.” Shelby interrupts, precariously delicate and forgiving, “Can I come closer?”

You nod and she tiptoes closer.

“Even if we didn’t meet today, I would have found you.” You look at her confused but she smiles, a faraway glow in her eyes as she takes in the simmering lights of the candles. “I forgive you.”

Forgiveness isn’t that easy. You move to interject but Shelby takes none of it because this is her forgiveness and it’s the very least she could do especially when she deserved it. “The world’s a grey place where our life is not completely our own. I don’t mean that in a bad way – I think that when we truly care about someone else, we consciously or subconsciously leave a part of ourselves with them.” Shelby pauses, gravity-drawn shoulders, a frowned smile crinkling out. “What I’m saying is, I understand where you are coming from. I guess I got so bubble wrapped in my own misery I didn’t see you. I should have said something, anything really. I’m sorry, Toni.” You watch her watch you, you see her stop, pause and rewind the unsaid words in her head, hanging without a voice on her lips but she only looks at you, long and in dire need as if they’ll extinguish the need of words in itself.

You cough pull yourself into a sitting, the long chair creaking underneath and Shelby looks away.

“I haven’t been in a church in a long time.” Her voice is coarse, the heavy undertone of her unused, rusted accent coming in waves crashing against the long lost shore. Shelby eyes the pedestal, the podium that stretches wide and fancy to the footsteps of the statuesque of Jesus, her hands curling around the silver cross like a lifeline. “When your world is in _His_ circumference but you grow up and you learn that those teachings are not all, are wrong, it takes you a long while to find your footing again. _To believe. To take that leap of faith._ ”

Her voice collapses as if Shelby is toeing on glass shards, slicing her skin one fiber at a time. “I called Becca horrible things because I couldn’t handle the temptation, _the guilt_ and _the shame_ of my church, of my family when I had kissed her. She trusted me and I broke all my strings with her. ”

She’s crying akin to a river in the midnight, silent and untouched and utterly alone, as if her pain has at last condensed into a deluge of rain.

“And then there was _you._ Always in my periphery. I thought if I could have you just once, that _gut-wrenching lust_ would go away and I would go back to the _girl_ I was supposed to be. But you stayed. And those feelings just grew and grew and – it was like my lungs were blooming in wildflowers, clogging and choking me. I thought if I could just hide _me, us_ for just a while I could have it all. My family and _you._ But Daddy always knows _somehow_ and then Becca died all _fucking_ alone in some mental ward somewhere - ”

She looks at you, sad and desolate.

“And then I left you. Because we were just having fun, _right?_ Because I didn’t know you also – ” She nods solemnly extracting herself out. “At that moment it felt like the most decent thing I could do.” She nods. “I ruined Becca. _I couldn’t bear it if I ruined you too._ ”

“What changed then? What made you come from out from – did your father - ?”

“We were out this one time for dinner – _Cheesecake factory._ And there is Spencer sitting opposite me and daddy and he were regaling about Cole. Cole was Spencer’s best friend for as long as I can remember but now he was _this faggot_ in the football team who had been looking at him _too indecently long_ to be proper. There had been rumors down the grapevine about Cole so Spencer thought it was his duty to help his friend so he had reported and got him kicked out of his team. Daddy had even suggested _some proper therapy_ to his family with his well-being in mind, away from a life of eternal loneliness. And all that while, Spencer had preened under his gaze and - ”

“I knew something had to give. I felt so tired. Of smiling. Of pretending. And when daddy asked me about you – I didn’t lie. _I couldn’t lie._ Because you mattered. Because Becca mattered. _Because I mattered but never to him, not in the way he wanted._ ”

Shelby grits her nails rugged and deeper into the wood of the chair. Her soul tears become tears in your eyes.

“Why didn’t you ever call? Why didn’t you ever – ever reach out – _fuck Shelby._ Just because you broke my heart didn’t fucking mean I stopped caring about you. Stopped fearing that you were somewhere out there all _fucking alone!_ ”

The emotions of love and loss burn in an invisible flame, unresolved and unbecoming, gut-wrenching sob tugging her in a heap of face hidden in shaking hands. “Honestly? I felt so guilty. Because Becca’s blood was in my hands and I couldn’t brush them off no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t face you after that. I thought you would forget me, eventually. Why wouldn’t you? We were something _untitled_ anyways and I left you in the dust, cruel and selfish and unloveable. I was miserable and losing my fucking mind but you were happy. You deserved it for such a long time and I was happy that you were happy and - ”

You cradle both of her hands and hold them unyielding in yours, the edges of her fine manicured nails now red, scratched and blunted. You thread your fingers through her shaking hands and bring them towards your face as you knee your back down and meet halfway – your tear-dried eyes touching the touch skin of her fingers.

Her face is flushed in ruminant pink. You wish benevolently you could sew the pain and ebb away the barren melancholy that has shadowed her like a tyrant. _You wish. You wish._

_You wish._

You hold onto her hands, clasp them tight and delicate until they stop shaking as if they are glass, and your fist a hammer – a little too tight and you’ll break them to the ground.

Having ice-cream was your idea, a cheap shot at extending the cloak of serendipity and familiarity that Shelby somehow has you wrapped around in. Of course, you don’t want it, but you also can’t do without it now that there’s this unbidden lightness in your heart that diffuses and blooms out in her smile. _It scares you really, the way she makes your heart stutter even now._

She doesn’t wear her gloves again, very well knowing that she doesn’t have the skin to tolerate cold. Instead, she lets her hand hang and drift and move in a motion, each lazed movement making her hand brush in a magical warm flush against yours.

You want to hold it _though._

_(You don’t.)_

Her face crunches up when you lick into your mint chocolate chip ice cream. It only makes you take a bigger bite, teeth, and prominent tongue and all. You have a pageant of acting before thinking when you hold her gaze and take the biggest swirl of the ice cream on your tongue- you honestly don’t think, but then again Shelby doesn’t look away, she _stares_ and _stares_ and _stares_ that a single creamed cookie dough falls cold on her fingers. This time, you find yourself in the audience, small steam of unmet frustration blurring out of your scarlet ears when she licks into her finger proper etiquettes and all. It’s an intrusion at best, _a self-centered desire_ at worst when you can’t help but gawk into the washed-out green of eyes, the same eyes that follow you leer a gaze onto the hold of her fingers docile and leniently hot.

The corner of the shop where you both sit faces the streets, the pole lights scoping out her features from under the nimbus of once blazed trails of your emotional baggage, silently comfortable in a way you couldn’t ever have thought before.

_But here she was._

_Here you were._

“How come you never told you loved me before – back, back then?”, Shelby asks twiddling the penny from the bill on the table. Your trance breaks, you regard her from across the table.

You can’t say you recall the exact time when you had realized you had fallen in love with her. Thinking about it now, you probably would have been doing something boring – maybe doing some assignments, running or throwing some hoops back when you were 17 – _you don’t recall_ but that realization had dawned on you like some universal truth, something you knew you would never be able to change. Despite that, you never did tell her.

“Don’t know really.” You lean your head, press it against the shop window. Shelby doesn’t look satisfied, you can feel it in the strain of her eyes. _Geez._ You smile timidly, a bit embarrassed for some reason. “Maybe I thought you didn’t feel the same way. I mean, you were way _way_ out of my league.” You shrug your shoulders, the explanation transparent. “I knew you were already under a ton shit of pressure from home so I guess, uh, I didn’t want to another layer of expectation for you – something you thought you needed to fulfill or some shit like that. And I don’t know what it says about it but I was okay with _just_ loving you without – you know” _Without any binds._

“You have always been this fiery passionate person as long as I have known you, on and off-court. A force to be reckoned and every time we would – _you know -_ ” She coughs, glaring at you when you laugh a meek tooth biting _fuck?_ “ bed each other, you were so calm and not panicking afterward while I was having this breakdown without, I guess I always thought it didn’t matter to you - ” _I didn’t_ “ the way it mattered to me.”

Her head is on the palm of her hands as she twirls the napkin on the table.

“It’s because I loved you. I trusted you.” You reply.

She grows silent, thoughtful at that. “ _Loved_ me, huh?” You hear an odd forced emphasis, a scoff, a sigh, an almost self-deprecating laugh.

“Hey there.” You interrupt, eyes darting up towards her head. “What’s going up there?”

“Nothin’ – just wondering if I had known back then if you had said something if I said something, you know, where would we be right now. If I hadn’t - ”

You reach forward, hand over heart, fist over _saying nothing at all,_ “Shelby, you can’t think like that, dwelling in what if’s. I don’t know much but I know that’s not it. You can’t – don’t think like that. Yeah?”

Shelby's fingers cobs through yours.

“Yea.”

“Do you think we have some time?”

The night is fallen into a darker black, the north wind picking up their cold pace. “I think so?” You drown whatever expectations that buds in you, unwilling to feed oil to some fire that going to dwindle either way. “We should probably be heading back just to be safe.” You nonchalantly reply.

“Right.”

She takes your decision without any minor struggles. You swallow the bitter pill of dejection.

_God._

“We can take a roundabout route, spare some more time?”

Her smile is half-hearted at best at your suggestion. You don’t dwell into it further, only to postpone your heartache, especially when you know she’s going to leave and you won’t be able to do a single thing about it.

“Back at my place in Binghamton, I have this stray cat that comes by every few days. Black fur, these light brown eyes and grumpy as grandparents are in their late 80’s.” She says from beside you, her perfume stagnant and high on your nose as you peer through the dimmed yellow windows of some thrift store momentarily before you move on.

“Never thought you to be a cat person.”

Shelby stops, eyebrows have risen, hands on her hips. “Is that supposed to mean something else?”

Despite the inevitable sadness, you probably laugh a fifth time and it hasn’t even been half an hour. “What? No!” You sound appalled and fascinated. “Get your mind out of the gutter. Geez. I meant it as you seem like a dog person.”

Shelby passes by you, brushing her shoulders against yours pulling a picture of a furred cat with the fluffiest tail sitting on the window pane on her phone. If anything, he looks _fucking annoyed._ “He kinda reminds me of you actually so named him Tony.”

“The cat’s a he?” You appeared offended, her laughter warming up your face up till your neck. “Nah, can’t be. It has to be that weird fetish you used to have on Tony Romo, right? Come on, I know I’m right.”

The passive look that flashes past her pauses you mid-stroll. She doesn’t voice her momentary thought, just choosing to bite her lips in an enticing way.

_Good God._

“Think what you believe but Tony Romo hasn’t got anything you.” She winks and you stand there oddly immobile and rooted.

You watch her look at you just shy of a million, stuck in a dialogue with herself that intrigues you to no end.

“Say it.”

Shelby stops.

“Say whatever it is you wanna say. It’s not like we have been the golden examples of propriety anyways.”

She rubs the skin of her palms. “I know you love your job.”

You roll your eyes. “It has its perks but go on - ”

Shelby rolls her eyes harder. “This shift from basketball to a government worker. Can’t say I’m not surprised. I always thought you would get drafted and I’ll be seeing you on the big television, shooting balls and _just winning._ ”

You bury your nose into your muffler, the warmth a welcome distraction from the green tainted warm honey hues that reflected over your expressions.

“I loved basketball. The euphoric feeling it gave me. But I guess, I loved it too much to make it something more permanent – in a professional way. I have seen players at the end of the day, come to hate the game they had loved initially. I didn’t want that for me. Basketball is something very pivotal, I love it and I’m grateful for it but it doesn’t define me, not anymore.”

“You come here often during this time?”

Shelby huddles up closer to you, linking her right arm through the small gap between your arms when you reach the main road and a huge opening of some fancy bar. She answers something which you don’t hear, your feet picking up a faster pace to come towards a more serene pavement.

“I said, been coming here the last couple of years during this time, that is. Other times just to see the city simply.”

The _who you visit_ is an utterly ordinary one but somehow, someway you can’t bring yourself to ask it. The prospect of the question leads to an unpleasant swell inside your stomach, your eyes jumping from one open surface to the other.

“I used to date this girl Rachel Reid for a while, couple of years back. She’s a professional diver and went to the same university as me and all that.” She swallows her dry throat. “Obviously didn’t work out, the break-up was amicable.” She winces awkwardly, looks at your placidly calm schooled expressions. Shelby nods unconvincingly. “Anyway, I didn’t have any place to go for Christmas holidays so she would invite to her parents’ place for the holidays and even after we broke up, it sort of became a tradition. I was pretty sure it was a pity at first but her parents and her sister Nora, his boyfriend Quinn – they are all real nice.”

Shelby looks like she has more to say but she clips her lips, so it becomes hard for you to walk in anything but tangible eggshells around her.

“You miss your family.” It’s more a question than a statement really but then Shelby missteps her footing her somehow nearly topples. There’s grief in the way she carries herself and you, _you understand that._ Families are messy and when it comes to families like yours and hers _it only gets messier_. And ironically, missing them doesn’t get easier either.

You tug at her sleeve ends. Her tears sit heavily on her mascara lashes when she relents to turn at you. Six years and it’s been radio silence from David Goodkind. It isn’t good, things are never going to get better but its _right thing_ no matter how hard tomorrow is, she says.

“Momma calls so far and in-between these days. Spencer doesn’t bother. Annabeth’s the only one who seems happy but she isn’t of age yet – but it’s better than nothing, right?” The biochemical impact of heartache is effortlessly palpable on her, the lights only highlighting her tragedy. She rubs the back of her hand over her eyes, small and porcelain under the winter sky. The need to silhouette her, to remind her that she’s always been worthy of love drums and drums and you move in the middle of some public street and on your toes you go and your arms wrap around her as human tight as you can. Because you are Toni and she’s always been just _Shelby_ to you and you won’t let the grief and all the wrenched guilt barricade the sun.

Her arms come as a human shield around you, stronger and stronger as if just holding you isn’t enough. As if she needs to mold you into her, press every breathing ounce of you – awake, gone, _and dead_ and ignite when in a holy wonder.

“Let the stars be my witness,” Shelby sniffles beneath your ears, “for I have missed you most ardently, Toni Shalifoe, more than you will believe, more than I would ever care to admit.”

You swallow your pride as you succumb to her vortex, your eyes wet as her pain burns a vortex in you.

“I missed you.” You ache into her. “I have missed you, Texas!”

The block you are in right now has a big tiered Christmas tree, each branch decked in lights and the singular star at the top head of it crowns it beautifully like some shooting star that instead of igniting alight everyone has decided to illuminate the compound. It’s pretty really. There are a few people here – posing and chatting and smiling.

Shelby pulls her leg up and plants her face on her kneecaps taking in the scene in an inexplicable affection. You lean back, denting your spine cruelly as you turn left to her.

“Do you regret that you and Rachel didn’t work out?”

“No, not really no. But it was helluva awkward at the beginning. For a while at least anyways.” She rushes to add, “But it’s alright now, not that it wasn’t alright before - Rachel’s dating some girl from her workplace and I’m real happy for her. I don’t think I could have made her happy in the way she would have liked anyway.”

Your tongue feels like ash in your mouth when Shelby looks towards you only to meet with emptiness and anything other than an _Oh!_ It’s juvenile and pathetically childish of you but still your heart beats into a rummage.

“Well, that’s okay. Normal, I mean, better now than later or something like that, right?” You wince at your own candor. “It’s just - it’s hard to find people who are compatible with you, like who makes you feel at ease and seamlessly comfortable with yourself, you know?”

She hums. 

“And how about you?” Shelby asks, a curious wonder and with an upsurge amount of jovial anticipation that has you raising your eyebrows at her. Shelby grumbles something incoherent. But you don’t know what to say. There hadn’t been anyone significant who you could reminiscent about – like any scorned lover would, possibly over that one overpriced bottle of wine they would give in their kitchen waiting for some special occasion that would never come.

What do you even say to her? _That there hadn’t been anyone worth staying around for other than you?_

You would sound clingy, like that very clichéd scorned lover.

“Just some casual flings here and there. No one worth mentioning really.”

Shelby jeers under the shallows, disdain in her features as if she has caught you in some white lie. She tries to placate her features into soothing indifferent lines but the subtle of a dense frown remains.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Shelby.” You nudge against her arm.

She cloaks her face well, devoid of the myriad of thoughts running through her mind. “If you didn’t wish to say, you don’t have to. It’s alright.” Her plastered smile has you confused. “ _Social media,_ Toni.” She gives a lieu of an answer. “We have mutual friends even though I’m not really active anywhere.” _Martha. Dot._

There’s a glint in your eyes, a _proud smirk_ that Shelby doesn’t appreciate. “So you stalked me? I have an online stalker.”

Shelby pushes you to the side and almost down from the seat. “No. _No._ They were all recent finds really. And afterward, it was just working up that courage of actually talking to them which never manifested in being.”

“Right.” Her confession sobers you, wincing at the sting of memories. “Then you’ll know they weren’t anyone worth mentioning. There was Fatin for a bit but that was years back and a girl named Sam back at grad school. But that was already in the sheens, to begin with.”

The aftermath of your answer creates a stagnancy, Shelby’s face guarded in distant white pillars.

“It feels like since we have met today, all we have been doing is either crying or _crying_ really.”

Her cheeks dimple out at this, her lips muffed as she peers at you. “Why? Trying to make me smile?”

You weigh your body into your right hand, smug and light-weighted. “When have I ever!” You bite into your fingers when she looks expectantly. “Alright. So you are a cat person apparently these days, huh.” Shelby rolls her eyes at that. “Okay, so two lesbians adopted a cat one night and the cat ran away. Why?”

There’s a smile wreaking havoc on her face already. “Nope. No. No. Not going answer that!”

But you punctuate your letters aloud as you breathe in closer to her ears. “Because it heard one - ”

“No - ”

“- of them say - ”

“No, no!”

“ _I’m gonna eat that pussy!_ ”

Her blush wins over her laughter, so spring and eye-opening you wonder if this has been heaven in hiding, a divine connection of her smile and the rosy pinkness that evokes something – _something real._

You wish to see it again.

“I have another one.”

“There’s children here!”

“How do you know it’s a dirty one?”

“I know you well enough!” She’s resolute, but she turned to the side to avert her gaze from you.

You don’t say anything to that. “Okay, so – what do you call a lesbian with long nails?”

You know Shelby’s curiosity is peaked when she chances a long confused glance at you. Your ribs are cackling up as you reiterate her look by following your gaze on her nails. _A tad bit longer,_ _almost perfectly well nourished and painted_ despite the crooked edges.

“Single.”

Her scoff is dramatic but isn’t as hard enough as the shove she gives you, silver lined with a loud _fuck you, Toni!_ That has some of the other peers in the area looking at her. Her blush is evergreen, amplified most graciously by the faux glare she bestows on you.

You bite you tongue, eyeing the single finger she twirls warningly in front of your eyes. 

“You say your prayers with that mouth, Texas?”

An odd amount of anticipation shudders on you when she slithers in closer, glazed sunset darkness in her eyes as they move to and fro scaling the small distance between your eyes and lips. You think you won’t stop her, or maybe you should stop her to talk but your mouth is already parted, halted in hypnosis but the emotional scars are a boogeyman under your bed that you try to snarl down.

You don’t give Shelby much credit, the way she attunes her senses to the slightest of your movements, the flinch in your stance otherwise minuscule and microscopic standing out as a yellow light.

She moves away but never too far enough, her body veiling over your side. The skin of your ears burns nonetheless.

“I’m sorry.” You still say, embarrassed.

But Shelby doesn’t mind. _She seems she doesn’t mind at least._ A murmured graze on your fingers. “Don’t be.” 

It’s a habit – that one you would always end up doing when Shelby would callously hold your hand, polite and hard at the same time. Her right hand’s tugged warm inside her coat and the other holds you just tight enough that you end up circling your thumb at the delve of her fingers, skin to skin that you feel the small coat of cold sweat in them. But then, there would be a small dance of the north wind and she would tug you closer, _closer_ – the shiver present and crawling but even in that cold, she holds your hand.

When the bright yellow lights of the Penn station make their head known, the urge to feed the silence becomes a dire need. But you don’t know what to say, you think you are all worded out – the mere idea of being vocal tires you but the fear of this might be _it_ leaves you in ruins.

“Do you think we would have ever met if we hadn’t crossed paths today?”

It’s a tricky question at best, a satirical at the extreme worst. You don’t where on which side of the coin do you want the answer to fall. Shelby looks just as jarred and conflicted as you feel.

“Fate’s a funny thing. Despite how ridiculous I might sound, I would like to believe that somewhere in the future we would have met anyway.”

Her words, though unearthly leaves you in an odd sense of envy. You would like to have that faith for once.

“Because the Lord works in mysterious ways?”

The cheeks of hers stretch unambiguously, her gasp of a peal of laughter breaking loud and clear out of the shared space between the two of you. She muffs with her hand, as she inches a step and another closer to you. Her smile’s awfully soft, worth drowning in it, _you think._

_It breaks your heart._

“No.” Shelby states. A stronghold and a foot down as if she will entertain no debate on the matter. “Because some things are inescapable, _inevitable._ Don’t you think so, Toni?” Her confidence only plummets a bit, a bold strike to a hot air balloon when she searches your face from a face but you come up with none. Instead, drearily you stagger a footing back to find some solid ground.

The announcements the station master makes rings through every creek, every crevice of the averaged out pillars, some train to some destination leaving just a few seconds ago as you both walk to the platform. The number of heads you had last seen are almost constant, only the faces are different this time.

You both stand there for long moments, basking in each other’s company in a way you haven’t felt the need to in a long while. She sweeps her tongue over her bottom lips as she nods over the sharp booming voice of the announcer towards the fancy small lit café at the corner.

There’s another train coming and you feel that _inevitability_ that Shelby had asked you rise and fall in like waves in an unrest sea inside of you. She looks at you, hopeful albeit hesitant and you honestly don’t know what to make of it. You have said it all, the best way you can without _asking_ and so had she – all bloodied ugly truths and boogeyman’s that crept one night too many from under your beds. But still there remained _that_ _something._

 _Untitled._ As Shelby had said.

Your voice betrays you, so you nod your head in a small _no._ Her face falls faster than Rome has, even if she tries to mask it fast. Just not fast enough. Her hopelessness that eclipses her face however has you agreeing to her proposition if only to delay the time just a little bit –

“You know what maybe we could - ” You begin and she turns to you.

There’s the chuck of the engine and the clatter of rails. The screeching voice of the announcer blooms as they recite the destination stations and the name _Binghamton_ falls somewhere in the middle.

Shelby sees the looks of apprehension on your face, “I’ll take the next one.”, she reassures. The few handfuls of people start loading up, even smaller traction comes off – there’s a long haul and rumble of the engine and even it leaves. You watch it go, it doesn’t do much to soothe your anxiety, not to mention the late time. You look up at her, eyes jerking between her face and the chunky clock that hangs just a few feet away from the wall. She pulls you closer.

“I’ll be fine! I’m off from work this week anyways.” She answers with a small smile. “I’ll take the next one. Promise.” 

_But the weather’s bad._

_What if there’s not another one for hours!_

_What if you ask her to come home with you?_

God, what if you do ask her that?

Shelby tugs at your sleeves away from the platform, you try to hold onto her wrist - “The weather already sucks, what if – there’s not for hours - ”

She bites into her pearly white teeth, lips parted in an ecstasy, “I thought you were a rebel, Shalifoe. Also, I have my big girl panties on in case you were wondering.”

It was a simple statement but nonetheless, your cheeks felt rosy, your reply meek and as steady as you can be against her champagne pink blush, “I wasn’t.”

She swallows and bites into her inner cheeks, the muscles of her smile delving further and further in. You are mesmerized, the drumming of your heart pumping and fueling your thoughts in an explicable adrenaline rush.

_You can ask her._

The grip on your hand on hers tightens.

“Toni?”

But there’s that churning and the repetitive voice of the announcer, it goes _on_ and _on_ and your ears stuck on the _Binghamton_ , the _last_ train for tonight and the remainder of your words drown. Had you even started though?

The train comes and moves in, inching closer and closer to a halt. You lose your hold on her, hands pressing against every open surface of your clothing, your pocket, focusing over Shelby’s _what the hell are you doin’_ until you find what you are looking for. You click the pen and push the roof of her palm and in scribbled and barely legible digits you pen down your phone number.

“There.” You fiddles with the metal end of your pen and Shelby stares at you in furrowed brows and a darkened hazel green. “Just in case.” You cough out in a half morose smile and residual courage that you can muster. _Why can’t you ask her?_

“Just in case.” You repeat in a small solace and let finally let go of her. There’s a warning whistle of the train and it almost feels like a _fin_ to a story that you didn’t know you were writing.

“What were you going to say?” She asks an odd amount of desperation bleeding out. You nod at her, the train collector peering out the empty station, flagging to the train driver.

“You need to go, Shelby.”

Shelby doesn’t move, adamant with only a foot on the first step of the train. “What the hell were you going to say?”

The final whistle roars inside the valve of your heart. You look at her, _haven’t you said enough? Haven’t your actions always spoken louder than your words?_

Your eyes don’t falter when looking into Shelby.

“Nothing.” You punctuate. _Just ask one last time._ “The train’s gonna leave, Texas, come on. Go, _go._ ”

You don’t what you had been hoping for. For her to actually go, to never to turn back _once_ , to rub the number that would you that inked on her skin _or_ for her to let that train leave and just _to stay_ this once without you having to bruise your nails against the ivory walls, without begging her to.

But the train leaves. Along with Shelby. Who doesn’t turn back _once_.

_Did your past overtake your present?_

And you fall onto the seat, a heap of heavy bones and flesh and jarred hopes and broken dreams and a love that’s forever going to be etched on your skin – the fist that you have been gripping your lifeline into finally unclenches and you curtain shut your eyes and heave long breathes as tears roll down - because hope and regret have always been two sides of the same coin, with _regret_ always bearing on the heavier crown than gratitude.

You don’t know why you keep staring at your phone, hoping it’ll ring, hoping it’ll be Shelby on the other end. It’s only been 20 minutes _since -_ your train home-bound is going to be here anytime soon. But there’s a salty stickiness on your cheeks that doesn’t go away no matter how much you try to rub it. You sweep across the blank screen and only your homepage stares back.

Maybe after all _this was it._

You, here alone, in an empty station _heartbroken_ with that _soul puncturing desolation and vexation_ and _why didn’t you fucking hell just tell her!_

“You are a fucking bloody asshole.” You mutter in the empty space. “And a coward too.” Marty was right. You are fucking useless lesbian, too prideful, too _fucking of a fucking coward_ as Fatin would say. And Fatin would be damn well right.

You look at the phone again and disappointment sips in a cloak of anger that you wish you could let go. But have tried to let her go for the past so many years, haven’t you yet she’ll still here and you groan loud – _just you should have asked her to stay._

“What?”

Her sudden voice echoes through the platform and almost has you startled, jerking up in your seat. 

You don’t catch her red rimmed eyes until she’s near, nothing out of the ordinary as she stands as a pretty figurine taking each step down the stairs. She looks just like you had seen her the first time _here_ but Shelby is disheveled in the way her purse holds her more than she hold onto it, in the wrinkles that mar her face as if she had aged _years_ since she boarded the train, in the puffiness of her lips sore and red as if she had been biting hard _in an aged old regret_ and the shadows that trail with each step she takes closer to you.

“What did you say?” Shelby asks, ramrod straight in slumping shoulders a few feet away from you.

You swallow, your lids are heavy. “I should have asked Marty if she could stay with me.”

“Really?” She asks, her head tilted, her gaze astute and honest.

You shrug into your white lie, you have never been a good liar but sometimes lying is easy. But every time you lie you mark yourself more of a coward. You nod and shift on your seat to make space for her.

“No.” You reply in fleeting eyes, your hands balling around the edge of the seat. She settles in the silence, right as rain and as expected.

“Won’t ask me why I am here?”

You turn towards her choosing to humor Shelby one last time, _one last time_ before you weed out the flowering buds of a hope mingled in tiredness, “Why are you here, Shelby?”

“Just couldn’t go without playing at the least one icebreaker.” Her lips hang out in a smirk as if it’s the doorway to everything you have been craving for and she’s itching to provide. Her said smirk brightens at your confused groove and then it breaks into something serene.

“ _Never have I ever -_ ” She breathes in the hollow space between the two of you. An avalanche breaks, Shelby nods looking at you spelled underneath some unknown charm, “Never have I ever wanted anyone _needed_ anyone as much I want you. For however long you’ll have me, in whatever capacity you think it’s possible – I just couldn’t go without telling you that. ” Her breath hitches, her bottom lip trembles as you faint your thump over the pink curvature of her skin. 

A singular heavy tear falls on your finger. You trace it over her lips.

“Lord knows I don’t deserve you.”

But _Lord_ doesn’t hold the tally marks, does he? She made them on your skin and you are the one to bear it, so you are the only one who’ll know the answer. You close the minuscule of space and press your lips encapsulating them over her torn ones. It’s waking in the halo of the docile white winter sun when you echo her tremble as you take her bottom lip between your parted ones. _Finally_ rings like that old church bell, an epiphany of those years’ long howls when two rivers running parallel throughout most of their life now delves without turbulence into a smooth longing one. Shelby moans, tights her hands on the collar of your shirt pulling you under her hooded ambrosia as if it’s an old practiced art and you let yourself be pulled into her current. 

There’s ringing cough in the radio waves as the station master buzzes himself out, your train arriving empty, old, and weary into the near-deserted station but this time the rumble, it’s not because of the engine but rather of the echoes of your heart beating hummingbird. She stands with you hesitant fiddling with the straps of her fancy purse. You tug your sling bag and hold onto her hands, barely catching the tail ends of _Pennsylvania_ station on her yellow ticket.

Your gaze stills and she blushes in apple cheeks and red ear tips. 

“I hope – please tell me I’m not overstepping anything because it’s alright if I am, I – I can always - we can talk on the phone and decide things through thoroughly before - ”

The train creaks to a pause. You laugh at her nervousness and Shelby, _Shelby_ shudders and punches you lightly indignant.

“I don’t mind your company at all.” You squeeze her hands reassuring her in the best way you can. “We’ll talk definitely when we reach my place. We have time, Texas.” You repeat as earnest as your soul wills you to. “We have time. And this - ” You gesture your finger motion between the two of you, “This is _something good._ And I think we deserve something good after all this time.”

Her eyes soften.

“We have time.” She repeats in reverence, half enchanted and half in love _you think_. “We have all the time.” Shelby bends down, in a revised haze and laps another kiss, finger penciling the surface of your cheeks.

The cabin’s empty almost. Just a handful of passengers scattered, all stuck in their own private world. You take your seat by the window and Shelby presses into you, solid and present and so close that even a passer-by won't be able to tell where you began and she ended, just a lump of mass enticed in the most delicate intricate curls.

“ _Somethin' good._ ” She smiles under her breath, in astonishment and joy, her lips brushing over your clothed shoulders.

And it is.

_Something good._

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, this was supposed to be under 6K! I haven't written a story in years so I'm definitely rusty and honest to God, can't tell if I have deteriorated or not. I hope not. Either way, whoever reads this, I hope you enjoyed it. Also, do leave me your kudos and your comments - let me know if this was a "yay" or a "nay" or any other constructive criticism! 
> 
> My Twitter handle is @lazymissglasses. Just putting it out there if anyone your guys want to drop by. Lol.
> 
> Hope you all are doing well!


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